Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—Jonah Goldberg

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This has been one of the most enjoyable political moments of my lifetime. I wake up in the morning and rush to find my just-delivered newspaper with a joyful expectation of worsening news so intense, I feel like Morgan Freeman should be narrating my trek to the front lawn. Indeed, not since Dan Rather handcuffed himself to a fraudulent typewriter, hurled it into the abyss, and saw his career plummet like Ted Kennedy was behind the wheel have I enjoyed a story more.

Alas, the English language is not well equipped to capture the sensation I’m describing, which is why we must all thank the Germans for giving us the term “schadenfreude” — the joy one feels at the misfortune or failure of others. The primary wellspring of schadenfreude can be attributed to Barack Obama’s hubris — another immigrant word, which means a sinful pride or arrogance that causes someone to believe he has a godlike immunity to the rules of life.

Jonah Goldberg
November 14, 2013
Obamacare Schadenfreudarama: It feels pretty good to watch the whole thing fail.
[H/T to John Balog in the comments here.

It is great to see that proponents of big government get whacked alongside the head with the clue-by-four of reality. Most of the time they are smart enough and deceptive enough to hide the tragedy of their misdeeds by diffusing it through time and layers of obfuscation that enable them to avoid taking the blame for the damage done. This time they reached way too far. It’s obvious to all but the most dedicated Marxists that this is a failure that directly affects millions and millions of people. And this time it will be much more difficult to blame on others.

Even these left wingers are jumping ship:

Of course there are those who view the Obamacare failure as a good thing:

Obama has a Second Chance to do what he should have done when first elected in 2008 with the criminally LOOTING Banking and Wall Street-scare EMPIRE (but which he didn’t have the guts to do then) —- he would have an amazing chance to do a rare ‘re-do’, and NATIONALIZE both the crooked looting Health-scare private corporate looting industry, AND go back and NATIONALIZE the even more obvious crooked looting Financial-Scare Industry — and insure (no pun intended) that important PUBLIC GOODS, like Health Care and Banking are removed from the hands of the PRIVATE CROOKS and returned to the hands of the democratic citizens who deserve not to be further ******.

Do not be complacent. This is a crisis and we must take advantage of it because you know the Marxists will if we don’t.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Richard O. Simpson

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My general counsel tells me that while firearms are exempted from our jurisdiction under the Consumer Product Safety Act, we could possibly ban bullets under the Hazardous Substances Act.

Richard O. Simpson
1973
Chairman, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
[Via GunCite.

The current efforts to ban lead bullets are in part a watered down version of the same mindset and is getting much better traction.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Anonymous Conservative

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The phases are Crisis, High, Awakening, and Unraveling. Here, Crisis is r-psychologies confronted by the shortage of K-selection. This turmoil produces an adaptive shift in the population’s psychology towards a more K-selected, politically Conservative psychology. High is the environment of r-selected resource excess that is produced by a majority K-selected populace, living in an environment where these rewards are enjoyed by those who produce them. Awakening and Unraveling are just the leftists gradually increasing in number due to the r-selection, and fucking up a good thing until it all falls apart, and the Crisis returns.

There is one huge difference this time, and that is our use of public debt to increase resource availability and extend the period of r-selection. This has allowed for a slight increase in the population’s shift towards the r-psychology in this cycle, and lengthened the period of Unraveling. That all will increase the magnitude of the Crisis we will face. This would have been predictable, if you had viewed the increases in national debt which began around 1980 in the context of this work . The disturbing aspect of this is that when the collapse comes, the hardcore Left will be particularly loony, since their amygdalae have essentially no adaptation to a more free, competitive environment. Today, not having free government healthcare, and free cellphones is the same to them as being tossed into Lord of the Flies. When things get so bad that there is no food or housing, they will be capable of anything. The coming Crisis will be epic.

Anonymous Conservative
June 14, 2013
Strauss and Howe’s Generational Theory, in the Context of r/K Theory
[What the author of the post claims will happen is that as society collapses the liberal psychology (“r-selected” people) will be unable to handle it and non-liberals (“K-selected” people) will physically, environmentally, and evolutionarily dominate the situation and come out of the crisis far better than the liberals.

Ry and I were discussion something a bit tangential to this yesterday and what he said is valid. Paraphrasing, “We need to be careful reading this stuff because it matches what we believe and want to believe.”

Still, I have ordered the book and look forward to listening to it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roger Rosenblatt

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As for the Second Amendment, it may pose an inconvenience for gun-control advocates, but no more an inconvenience than the First Amendment…

Lasting social change usually occurs when people decide to do something they know they ought to have done long ago but have kept the knowledge private. This, I believe, is what happened with civil rights, and it is happening with guns. I doubt that it will be 25 years before we’re rid of the things. In 10 years, even five, we could be looking back on the past three decades of gun violence in America the way one once looked back upon 18th century madhouses. I think we are already doing so but not saying so.

Roger Rosenblatt
August 2, 1999
Get rid of the damned things
[An “inconvenience”? That should tell you all you need to know about these people. Specific enumerated rights are an “inconvenience” when they are “doing the right thing”. This wasn’t Pravda, Democratic Underground or some other openly communistic forum. This was in Time magazine.

This is from the dark ages when even at the high levels of professional gun rights advocates were telling me, “It will all be over in 10 years.” It’s now been nearly 15 years and we are in a much stronger position than we were in 1999. Public carry of a firearm is now legal in all 50 states with only D.C. still in the dark ages. 41 states have shall issue concealed carry and three states have constitutional carry.

What Rosenblatt didn’t and perhaps still doesn’t understand is that 100 million gun owners with 300 million guns buying 10 billion rounds of ammunition each year is going to be more “inconvenient” than words on a piece of paper written 200+ years ago when he sends someone by to “get rid of the damned things”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—President Obama

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It ought to lead to some sort of transformation. That’s what happened in other countries when they experienced similar tragedies. In the United Kingdom, in Australia, when just a single mass shooting occurred in those countries, they understood that there was nothing ordinary about this kind of carnage. They endured great heartbreak, but they also mobilized and they changed, and mass shootings became a great rarity

…

The main difference that sets our nation apart, what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings, is that we don’t do enough — we don’t take the basic, common-sense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What’s different in America is it’s easy to get your hands on gun — and a lot of us know this.

…

Well, I cannot accept that. I do not accept that we cannot find a common-sense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic Second Amendment freedoms and the rights of law-abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis.

President Obama
September 22, 2013
Remarks by the President at the Memorial Service for Victims of the Navy Yard Shooting
[H/T to Jay F. for the email.

Read that last paragraph carefully. He says we can “preserve our traditions, including our basic Second Amendment freedoms”. That he added the word “basic” there is highly suspicious. Do you suppose he considers muzzle loading long guns as “basic” but not semi-autos firearms or handguns? That would be consistent with his admiration for Australia and England which banned extensive classes of firearms including semi-autos and handguns. And he did push hard for the latest “assault weapon” ban.

But I think I can rephrase his words just a bit to make his intent more clear:

Just like your health insurance, if you like your guns you can keep your guns.

Isn’t that better? What could be ambiguous about that? It’s good to have clarity.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hystad and Peschin

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The sniper is a predictable consequence of a gun industry bent on marketing military and military-style weapons to consumers in an effort to revive sales. This mass marketing includes sniper rifles that are radically different from standard hunting rifles yet are easier to buy than handguns. Industry marketing also has fueled a sniper subculture that glorifies the “one shot, one kill” technique used over and over again by this sniper.

Most Americans are surprised to learn that firearms, one of the most lethal consumer products, are not regulated for health and safety. That means there’s no way to track manufacturers who distribute to unscrupulous dealers, no way to collect data on manufacture and use and no way to ban products that pose an unreasonable threat to public safety.

Cheryl Hystad and Susan Peschin
October 24, 2002
Sniper exposes a need for real gun regulation
Cheryl Hystad is executive director of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition in Baltimore, and Susan Peschin is firearms project director for the Consumer Federation of America in Washington.
SusanPeschin 
Peschin lying again. Image and story from here.
[The ignorance, or willful lying, is strong with these two. You would think they should know that GC68 provides for a means to trace guns and the 4473 forms we fill out to buy new guns are used everyday for just that. That doesn’t even get into the ignorance or lying in the first paragraph with “sniper rifles” versus hunting rifles.

I know, and I strongly suspect they know, the only way they can win is through willful ignorance and/or lying. Shouldn’t we have some “common-sense” regulation that sends people to prison for attempting to violate someone else’s rights? Oh yeah! We already do.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Washington’s bureaucracy, at the behest of their master, has spoken: they see us as the enemy.  And we should not be at all surprised that their closest enemy is the House of Representatives, the single entity in the Federal government intended to represent The People.

Roberta X
October 7, 2013
Like An Occupying Army
[That is a very good point.—Joe]

Quote of the day—dustydog

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A lawyer telling you that ‘society needs gun insurance’ is like a frat telling you ‘society needs to lower the drinking age for hot co-eds.’

dustydog
November 7, 2013
Comment to Why ‘gun liability insurance’ is a bad idea
[I suspect being compared to a lawyer is libelous to “a frat” wanting a lower drinking age for hot coeds but I get the point.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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Under the First Amendment, California is not allowed to compile a list of books you can read, and under the Second Amendment the state should not be allowed to compile a list of handguns you can own.

Alan M. Gottlieb
November 6, 2013
GLOCK FILES AMICUS BRIEF SUPPORTING SAF’S CALIFORNIA CASE
[Nor is California allowed to compile a list of religions you may join, a list of crimes that you are required to confess to, or a list of people exempt from the 13th Amendment protection.

SAF, “winning back firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ashley

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Nobody cares about your guns, if you hunt with them or (I hope) someday kill yourself with them.

…

Everyone else considers “ya’ll” crazy. We strive for the day that your ancient propaganda goes extinct. You, Mr. Redneck, are a dying breed of ignorance.

Ashley
November 5, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—The Coquette
[Why are anti-gun people so violent? Oh, yeah. Now I remember.

Don’t ever forget. There are a sizeable number of anti-gun people that want you dead. They want your children dead. This is just one willing to announce it on my blog. They believe their desires are so mainstream they don’t even have to hide that wish and will tell it to your virtual face. And perhaps it is a mainstream view in San Luis Obispo California where Ashley is (IP address 66.215.49.99). Yet people look at me a little strange when I tell them I try to avoid California because those people hate “my kind”.

People will say “it’s just talk”. “You don’t have to worry about someone like that.”, they will reassure me. Probably not. But I’ll bet a lot of people didn’t think they would have to worry about a half nuts failed artist in prison writing a book about “My Struggle” either.

And you do you notice that in her world view I’m ignorant and crazy? I’m quoting U.S Supreme Court cases, Federal Appeals Court cases, and Gandhi. What does she reference to bolster her view? Nothing. And claims of me being ignorant by people who have spent more than two minutes of time talking to me are non-existent. I am therefore forced to conclude that Ashley has based her conclusion on ignored data. Which, if I’m not mistaken, makes her the ignorant or possibly crazy one.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Coquette

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Dude, you can wave court cases in my face all you want. At the end of the day, you’re still the wingnut who’s against centralized firearm registration and liability insurance because guns are like bibles.

The Coquette
November 3, 2013
Comment to On gun control
[There are so many lessons to be learned from this thread.

My response:

If suggesting the Second Amendment should be treated like the First Amendment means one should be called a “wingnut” then you will have to call a bunch of Federal Judges the same: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-…

And if you can’t be persuaded by the laws, the Federal Courts, or me gently pointing out the facts that makes you the dictionary definition of a bigot. I’m so glad we are a ruled by laws limited by the enumerated powers of the Constitution rather than by bigots. Otherwise we would still have Jim Crow type laws still being enforced, Jews being denied entry into schools, and concentration camps for the Japanese.

If being a defender of civil rights makes someone a “wingnut” in your book then I have a lot of “wingnut” company I am proud to be associated with. Are you just as proud of your association with the KKK?

Coquette response:

You’re not a defender of civil rights, Joe. You’re just an old white man in a fedora leaving creepy comments on my website.

It’s sad, really. You’re so myopic that you can’t even look past the barrel of your own gun and focus on the greater good.

My response:

All the evidence presented here is that the right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated civil right. All nine Supreme Court justices in the Heller decision agree with that. That your refuse to acknowledge that and insist that my defense of that right is somehow contrary to being a defender of civil rights takes a great deal of arrogance or is evidence of serious delusions.

We are done here. But thank you for playing along. This thread is
great material for my blog. You will be featured with Quote of the Day status on Tuesday.

Coquette response:

Looking forward to Tuesday, big guy. In the meantime, keep on using words that you don’t understand.

It should not be surprising that in addition to being prejudiced against gun owners that they have hostile opinions about people of certain ages and skin color.

Coquette is not the least bit concerned with the Bill of Rights or court rulings. All that matters is what they think is “the greater good” and looking down on people that disagree with their “superior” opinion. There is not even a glimmer of recognition that they might be wrong.

But that Coquette is concerned with “the greater good” tells us all we really need to know. The concept of individual rights is either alien or distasteful to them. The “greater good” is the mantra of the tyrant and the ever present excuse for genocide.

That someone can be that blatant in their disregard for the rule of law and individual rights is extremely scary. Even President Obama and VP Biden say they “respect” the Second Amendment and the courts rulings. They don’t of course, but they claim to. This person completely ignores the concept of rights. This is how governments end up murdering millions of their own people. People like this get into power and the rule of law disappears.

Again, the Second Amendment is to protect people from liberals.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mailin Wong

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The best is to move to another more civilized country when people don’t get boners just by watching guns.

Mailin Wong
May 5, 2013
Comment to Staples starts selling 3-D printers
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via email from Sean Y.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Emily Miller

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The only way a mandatory check would work would be if the government could track every one of the 300 million firearms in the United States. And then the criminals would ask permission before buying them.

Emily Miller
Emily Gets Her Gun: …But Obama Wants to Take Yours
[300 million guns? We have computers that could do that, right? They built a computer system that signed people up for Obamacare so they should be able to do that for gun owners, right?*

These would be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for “universal background check to work”.

They would also have to shut off the smugglers. You should assume this would work about as well as the War on Drugs has worked.

They would also have to prevent all the 3-D printers from making new guns. You should assume this would work about as well as the peeing into the wind.—Joe]

*In fact the Canadian gun registry (disbanded after costing 2 billion rather than 2 million) was built by the same people that wrote the Obamacare website.

It’s for your own good

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Sometimes people just don’t get it unless you can present the information to them in the proper format for their brains to grasp it.

Does the following help?

From @State_Control:

CapitalistsSocialists

What if it were a business that told you to buy their product or they would send men with guns to collect the money anyway? It’s for your own good they tell you. What would you do?

Why should it be any different if it is Obama doing the same thing?

Quote of the day—mikee

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People? Brownian motion with random, moving magnets arrayed in their environment, as far as I can tell.

mikee
October 24, 2013 at 11:55 am
Comment to Quote of the day—Timothy Sandefur
[This comment showed up when Barb and I were at lunch. I laughed pretty hard when I read it. I showed it to Barb but she didn’t know what Brownian motion was and it spoiled the mood some.

It’s funny because I suspect, on the scale of all humanity, the model has a positive correlation with the available data.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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We return to Stalin’s omelet. Over and over, Democrats calmly and cruelly explain that only five percent of Americans will be booted off their insurance plans. And those insurance plans were substandard anyway.

First of all, five percent translates into roughly 16 million Americans. Each person whose insurance is terminated because Obama does not like his or her choice is a story of fear and panic and possible financial ruin. Further, does anyone even believe the Democrat apologists’ quote of five percent? That number will grow and grow as ObamaCare tightens its death grip.

The “only five percent” line of reasoning tells us a great deal about the utopian vision of Democrats. The individual does not count. Democrats claim to see the larger picture. But they see only a collective, a manageable herd. And once again, they know better. Forget that millions of Americans voluntarily entered into contracts they deemed right for themselves and their families. This counts for nothing to the Democrat political class. They are experts. They attended Ivy League schools. This makes the professional political class — overeducated, inbred elitists — better qualified to make decisions for us, the American people, that are truly about matters of life and death.

The core of American values is liberty, not government.

Robert J. Avrech
October 30, 2013
The Democrat-ObamaCare Purges
[You should never forget that “only five percent” line. Communists have used identical reasoning in their purges. The good of the whole is more important than the good of the individual. And if they have to “break a few eggs” they really don’t see what the problem is.

The differences between us cannot be resolved with a compromise. If they liquidate 1% or 10% it does not matter to me. They would still be committed mass evil and deserve whatever the “Nuremburg Courts” rule.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Lining up armed men in uniform to say “Verboten!” to members of the public wanting to pay their respects at a revered monument (one made of hard, hard rock and solidly anchored) is utterly necessary to the continued functioning of our great republic.

Okay, then.  But they’re gonna need taller, shiner boots.

Roberta X
October 6, 2013
Fed.Gov Has Shut Down The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall?
[I think I will start stealing that last line even though it’s not the shiny boots that make the difference. It’s the guns that back them up.

What they don’t seem to understand is that we have guns too. Not only guns but numbers. Numbers of people and numbers of guns that outnumber their guns and numbers. Please stop pushing because demonstrating the guns or the numbers will be very unpleasant for all involved.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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Liberal supersessionists claim to be worried about conservative secessionists when they should be far more worried about conservative supersessionists. The consensus we all live by is a fragile thing. It is being torn apart by the radical left and once it is destroyed, it will not bind the right, in the same way that it no longer binds the left.

And then the true conflict will begin.

Daniel Greenfield
The Supersessionists of the Liberal Confederacy
October 20, 2013
[H/T Kevin Baker.

Every paragraph in this awesome post could qualify as a quote of the day or week or even month. It is very, very good.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mike Konczal

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It’s important we get more sophisticated analysis of what has gone wrong with the ACA rollout to better appreciate how utilizing “the market” can be far more cumbersome and inefficient than the government just doing things itself.

Mike Konczal
October 23, 2013
What Kind of Problem is the ACA Rollout for Liberalism?
[In other words, “Our government program is such a disaster that we need a new and expanded government program to fix it.”

Monopolies are almost always a bad thing. The lack of choice creates a situation where inferior and expensive products do not get improved or replaced. Konczcal and hard-core liberals want government monopolies. The soft-core liberals want to regulate the market.

What Konczal doesn’t understand is that he, politicians, and government in general, do not have the domain knowledge to solve most problems. This includes regulating the solution providers. When I read the instruction manual for my car and it says to use a particular grade of gasoline and change the oil every 5000 miles I follow their recommendations. They know their car far better than I do. Even though I am a software engineer when a software package says it requires X megabytes of RAM Y megabytes of disk space I follow their recommendations because they know their software far better than I do.

The advocate for more government might say, “We will bring in experts and/or we will become experts.” This doesn’t work. I worked in a government lab for three years. I remember sitting in a meeting discussing how to get more research contracts. One guy said, “What we have is the ability to become experts on anything within a couple of weeks.” He was serious. I felt the blood drain out of my face. I had been working with him for over two years and I had not yet discovered anything that I considered him an expert on. They spent several years and millions of dollars coming up with a software testing and quality program for the software being developed at the lab. What they came up with was something that the industry had left behind a decade or two previously (the “waterfall model”).

The reason government cannot acquire the expertise is because they are a monopoly and expertise is like a product. It must constantly be improved and updated to remain relevant. And without the marketplace pressure it will stagnant and become obsolete.

Because of this lack of domain knowledge and the inherent inferiority of monopoly products government “doing it itself” will always be the wrong answer to a problem that doesn’t involve the use of force.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Fyke

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@linoge_wotc @rickygervais Couldn’t agree more. @NRA members need guns to prove their men. #PenisEnvy #GunControl

Jeff Fyke
Tweeted on May 6, 2013

[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via still another Tweet from Linoge.—Joe]